Abstract
Sequences of phase-locked laser pulses have been employed to control the orbital angular momentum character of an electron wave packet, which is initially created from a superposition of and Rydberg series. By an intelligent choice of phase, which depends on the excitation energy and the quantum defects, we are able to selectively pump down either all or a fraction of one or other angular momentum component, and by employing multichannel quantum-defect theory we are able to analyze the quantum-state distribution in detail.
- Received 13 August 2002
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.263004
©2002 American Physical Society